I live in Dubai, ask me anything

Do you get to visit them often?

You still haven't said what industry your partner works in and how working in Dubai compares with his working life and conditions in the UK?

I think I've asked that three times now.

Do you mean Leslie Stevenson’s Six Levels of Mentality?
Was philosophy your field before you gave up work?

Well, if you can't future proof it without being a tax dodger, that doesn't say much for your forward planning.

They spy on their live in staff through cameras who cares for their children because they're not trustworthy? Yeah that does sound a bit 'buy a dog and start barking yourself.'

If they're not trustworthy how can you leave them alone unsupervised?

Or is it because the wages and lack of respect from employers and society in general makes the staff unhappy? That people think they can't be trusted?

Because deep down they know they're not treating them right and if you treat people like shit they might well act like it.

You also seem sure that foreign construction labourers have reasonable employment rights, contracts and working conditions.

I'm not sure why there's so much publicity about the opposite being true? Why would people lie about it?

No. I had to spend time there (for work) and this was my experience of the ex pats whom I met who were living there.

Have you met every ex pats in Dubai? Are you speaking for them all? My experience may have been small, but significant enough to get an overall picture.

What was your husband’s (and your) job in the UK? Level of seniority etc?

Thank you. ☺️

Then I'm confused because you've said that you are coming back in 5/6 years? If it's so bad, why would you come back?

I get you like Dubai, despite the many reasons that it wouldn't be the choice for me, but you don't have to shit on the UK so much. Especially when you are coming back.

Ask yourself the question, if you spoke publicly about Dubai like you have the UK, you would risk getting arrested. How is that not a shortcoming?

So will I. They're running the country into the ground. I'm no fan of Reform, but this current Labour government are an absolute shower.

Who doesn’t want to keep 100% of what they earn?

I've never minded paying tax and believe it's the price we pay for living in a civilised society that picks people up when they fall.

Over half of the UK population also give regularly to charity on top of paying tax so I guess many people are committed to giving part of their earnings to help others.

Each to their own though.

I've actually not said anything about your life or tax. I don't doubt your life is better in Dubai. I don't doubt you prefer the options it gives you. Or the work life balance.

I do question the financial security stuff if you say though with living abroad. There's lots of hidden costs to this. Including the risk if everything goes tits up in UAE.

My issue is and remains the blinkers you chose and the dismissal of reality because you don't want to engage with it.

I had moments on this thread where I really thought, "just how much choice does she have as the tag along wife and how that removes her freedom of choice from certain things". Notably whether you can leave Dubai if the security issues get too much for you and you disagree with your husband over them.

I even said about giving benefit of the doubt.

But the nasty jealousy name-calling shit has put pay to that.

You've made active choices that a lot of people fundamentally find abhorrent. I've actually gone easy on this point too.

You need to take some ownership of this and accept that on an ask me anything thread you are going to get asked anything and i don't believe you have been completely honest on it.

The overall impression I'm left with is that money is the be all and end all to you and you don't see anything different and of value.

That makes me feel sorry for you in a very different way. Not jealous.

Especially if, it does all come crashing down. Which I hope doesn't happen cos you have a couple of kids in the equation.

I've lived abroad before. I simply couldn't not make the same decision and take the same risks with a couple of kids. If I was financially well off enough to afford multiple properties, I'd wouldn't have gone to Dubai in the first place (cos you are unlikely to have bought them all in the past year which is how long you've been in the Middle East). I wouldnt be moving the kids around like that cos I know what it's like to move about and not feel like you belong to a place. My Mum lived abroad for a while in her teens. She ultimately resented her parents for it. You can't stay 'in touch' with others even if you keep coming back regularly and social media. It still changes relationships because you don't have shared life experiences.

The fact you have such a negative attitude to the UK isn't healthy either. However you cut it. That's not necessary to justify your decision to go to Dubai either.

Honestly, if you want to live in Dubai that's up to you. But don't dress it up as a utopia whilst dumping on the UK and being shitty about people who question it, when you literally invited questions about your life.

Take ownership of it and if you are really being honest you need to address the point about living with such security issues and what the next twelve months realistically could look like given what's being said on media based in the Middle East itself. Noting Al Jareeza is based in Qatar and what the Emir of Qatar himself is saying. There isn't a BBC or Daily Mail filter going on here.

All I see is epic denial and an unwillingness to actually engage with the thread you started.

Which was kinda my point from the very start anyway .

So on this basis, if things do kick off, you don't feel the UK government has any duty to repatriate you or other expats? Is that correct?

Certainly when I lived there, some of the people who were specifically thrilled with Dubai’s underclass being kept out in the desert in labour camps were older South Africans. (I’m not suggesting all white SA people were fine with apartheid by any means, but it was fairly clear these specific people saw nothing wrong in a system that had benefited them, and found Dubai a perfectly natural transition.)

Without any context, those role descriptions could mean anything.

Burglary rates in the UK have declined by 72% since the start of the 2000s. Burglaries involving violence have always been a tiny percentage of the whole. You’re most at risk of being attacked in your own home by your DH and you brought him with you to Dubai. I have not heard of a single instance of a child walking a few steps in front of its parent being ‘snatched’.i lived in London for much of my adult life and walked around and used public transport at all hours of the day and night without ever being mugged.

Either you’re inventing straw men to justify your choice to live under an exploitative dictatorship that has paid you off, or else, poor @britindubai, you must have lived in terribly deprived, dangerous crime-ridden areas despite your incredible wealth?